Crack
by TheShadowArchitect
Summary: Daredevil gets shot. Claire helps him. Blatant whump. Contains violence and blood. (previously posted to AO3 and tumblr)
1. Chapter 1

At first the sound of the gunshot was so loud, so piercing, so engulfing that he did not recognize the stabbing pain in his side. There had been a silence in which he'd turned toward the light scrabbling of feet, someone turning, someone pulling a metallic object from its holster… and he'd been too late to move out of the bullet's path before the sound of gunpowder igniting enveloped him.

He crouched immediately, still not feeling the pain. His ears were ringing sharply, his sense of hearing momentarily taken out of commission. The concrete was rough against his hands and he refocused, feeling the man run away from the scene through the alley's pavement.

Why would he run? Matt thought. He could smell rank sweat, some fresh, some a few days old, on the man's body. It smelled like fear chased with a tang of pain. The perspiration was laced with several opiates, an amphetamine and something else he couldn't place. The man was still high, it could be nothing, the sound of a siren a mile off in pursuit of someone else…

But Matt's hearing was returning and there were no sounds of sirens near enough the man would be able to hear, no other humans within a thirty yard radius even curious about the gunshot. None were leaving their apartments, no one even calling 911. So why would he run?

And then there was a metallic smell in the air, and Matt was confused for a half a second. He hadn't injured the man, there had been no blood drawn in the brief fight. Spat. The sound of a single drop of liquid hitting concrete. Not rain. Warm, hot even, thicker than rain…

The man was not worth pursuing, he determined. From their brief encounter, he knew nothing of interest to Matt. Matt stood sharply, and only now as his head swam along with a sudden, sharp pain in his side did he realize the blood smell, thick in the air, had been his own.

He remained standing but unmoving, sweeping his surroundings for threats before turning his senses on his own body. A swath of his side was boiling, electric, feeling as though the prongs of a taser was being pressed against it. Hot blood was soaking the area of his shirt and spreading against his skin, cooling and congealing the further it got from its origin.

He felt himself begin to shake and willed it away. It wasn't that bad, the bullet went in under the skin about half an inch and straight out the other side intact. There was skin and fat and a little muscle damage, painful but nothing vital had been hit. Nothing broken. He'd had worse. The man who had run had been a lousy shot. The pain was bad enough though, and he had to will himself even to move.

He stumbled in the first couple of steps, staggering to the brick wall of the nearest building before forcing himself to stand normally. He felt acid rise in his throat and swallowed it harshly. His stomach felt like it was caving in on itself.

He took a few seconds to pull the burn phone out with shaking hands, dialing Claire's number a little too slowly and raising it to his ear. One ring, two rings, three rings. He waited. On the fourth ring the call transferred to an automated voicemail box. He waited for the beep and then hung up and dialed again. Same response.

Claire's apartment was six blocks and a fire escape ladder from his current position. If she didn't answer the phone, odds were she was still at work. Still, she had supplies and if he could stay together enough to break into her place, he could patch himself up.

Fortunately, there were few people out and about this time of night, and even fewer who cared to notice blood on a black shirt. He'd had no other reason to choose the color.

Walking normally wasn't an option without significant pain, and he compromised to stumble slightly, leaning into his injured side and correcting as needed to stay on the sidewalk. The dizziness helped to sell his implied story that he was a drunk returning home from a night at the bars. It was more from pain than bloodloss, he decided, though as he approached the 6th block and the soaking of cold blood reached his knees he started to wish he'd paid more attention to that from the beginning.

People began to stir in the apartments around him, and a few early risers made their way to the street. For now they were hurrying to offices and bus stations, not paying attention to a man in all black who was staying as quiet as possible. That would change, he figured, when the sun came up.

He'd been out all night, he realized, and this injury would leave him another few hours behind in getting to the office. If he hurried, he would be able to catch an hour of sleep and pass it off as a missed alarm…

He made it up the fire escape with the last energy he had, screwing his eyes closed and storing the previously dulling pain somewhere distant as he ripped the wounds open again. He collapsed, gasping, on the landing by her apartment window, feeling a fresh measure of blood well out of the exit wound. He closed his eyes, his whole being exhausted and stressed to breaking from pain. He clasped at the injury, hoping it would stop bleeding in case the very real chance he would pass out came to fruition.

Matt pressed a button on his watch. Five forty-eight, AM. It chirped calmly. He moaned just quietly enough that anyone on the street at the end of the alley wouldn't be able to hear him. He let his body settle, to rest for a second before contemplating breaking into Claire's apartment in the hour before she got home.

The city was waking up several floors below him. The scents of three different cafes and four bakeries, four variations each of fresh aftershave and stale alcohol met his nostrils passively. The sound of his own blood oozing through the grate below him and dripping slowly to the pavement below that.

…And the sound of a heartbeat in the apartment next to him. Claire was home, and she was awake. There was no relief, or anger, or really any other emotion in the realization. it was only dogged pragmatism that made his bloody fist hit the glass sliding window. Again. She was in the other room. Again. She didn't hear him. Again. He was getting so tired. The exhaustion of three days with little sleep combined with the pain combined with the bloodloss was taking the fight out of him. He let his fist hit the grate, incoordination finally getting the better of him. He finally heard her footsteps padding across the carpet.

He let his mouth form a weak smile. "Hey Claire. Great morning, huh?" He whispered, and passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a fist-shaped smear of blood on her window, a long, dark shape lying on the grated fire escape against the brick backdrop of the building across the alley. She didn't have to think too hard about who it was. His fist came up again, paused desperately, hit the glass and then collapsed still by his side.

She fought back a short -very short- moment of panic. He'd made it up the fire escape. He'd probably make it a few seconds longer. She opened the sliding window and took him in.

His teeth were gritted tightly together, his body shaking like she'd just pulled him out of a frozen lake. His hands were covered in blood, and the dark fabric glistened with harsh red liquid from his chest to his knees. His eyes were screwed shut. She couldn't believe it when he forced out actual words. Hey Claire. Great morning, huh? But then his body went slack and she indulged a second moment of panic.

"Yeah, screw you too." She mumbled, pulling herself back into some semblance of nonchalance. All in a night's work now, though, and she resisted the urge to pull him through the window straight away. Instead, she took a pair of gloves from the box by the door and snapped them onto her hands, hoping he could somehow feel the grief he was giving her in the action.

She climbed out of the window onto the rickety escape. "You know they sent me home early tonight, right? And all the way home on the subway I thought, 'hey, wouldn't it be nice if after getting the shit kicked out of me by a DT's patient at work, I could come home to your sorry ass on my porch.'" There wasn't a lot of room on the fire escape and she straddled him out of necessity. "And had that not been utter sarcasm, I would have meant it in a completely different context…" She shook her head. In the dusky grey morning light the two of them must have looked half crazy from the street below, but Matt was the kind of person who could have crawled up the three flights of ladders with four fractured vertebrae and a concussion so she needed to get her assessment underway sooner rather than later.

She forced her hands under his back. She kept forgetting how heavy he was when he was unconscious. At least he was breathing, and she could feel his heart beating a little faster than usual under her hands. "Hey, you know, I like it when people listen to me gritch about my night." Her fingers traced each of his vertebrae independently, eliciting not so much as a soft whimper as her forearm pressed against his gunshot wound. "If you could wake up that would be even better." She sighed, hands on hips, planning her next move.

Satisfied that his head, neck and back were intact, she stood, feeling her own injuries -a couple of bruised ribs and a swollen left eye socket- for the first time since he'd arrived. That made her a little angry, but everything this morning could have been a lot worse and like it or not she'd somehow signed on for this. "Just the GSW then, you're making my morning easy." She said, trying to convince herself. "You promise not to bleed too much on my carpet, you might make it to my good list."

She went and got the blanket he'd bled on the last time. In the intervening week she'd washed it as well as she could, getting a strange look or two from the woman at the laundromat. Placing it on the floor by the window, she carefully dragged him over the threshold.

By the time he was inside, his blood covered her scrubs and forearms and she figured she looked like something out of a slasher film. She almost laughed at her decision to use the gloves. She moved a stand lamp over to her new work area, and got the medical kit she hadn't even put away from last time.

With trauma shears, she cut the dark fabric away from the wound expertly and peeled it back away from the wounds. The shirt was sodden with congealed blood and clung to his skin as though soaked with gelatin. The skin beneath was dark orange-red with drying blood. She pressed gently against the edges of the wounds. The bleeding had mostly stopped, and there was no indication of blood pooling beneath the wound either, which she appreciated. He moaned quietly. "Oh now you've decided to wake up… Just in time for the fun part, I have to warn you." She said, shaking her head, taking pity on him. "I'll try to make it quick." She felt him tense under her hands- he could hear and understand her at least, which was good.

His abdomen was suddenly ridged, his fingers clawing into the blanket, curling into fists. "Shh, shh, you're okay, you're doing great." She said calmly, putting a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to distract him. "You lost some blood but its not nearly as bad as last time, huh?"

"Fffffghaah" he said, "hhhaa" and she could tell the noises had been involuntary. He was forcing himself into control. His eyes rolled shut again but this time he din't go limp. "Do… it." He forced out. She nodded, knowing he couldn't see it.

"Okay." She dug prefilled saline syringes out of her bag and flushed the wound as well as she could. This was battlefield medicine, non-sterile, lifesaving only, not how she was used to practicing.

She'd never been taught internal sutures, and she knew she couldn't figure them out fast enough, and certainly not at this angle with the supplies she had. But the bleeding had stopped and she took that to mean the internal part of the wound had closed itself- at least temporarily. The wound went no further than muscle. She could continue to meet his request to remain outside the hospital for the time being.

She closed the exterior quickly, marveling at his ability to stay still for it. She covered the outside in an ABD pad and wrapped his torso with self-adhering tape. If her boss could see it she'd have been fired on the spot, but this was a very different world to the hospital she worked at. The improvisation, she felt, had been impressive at least.

"There, I'm done." She said, sitting back and watching his tightly controlled writhing fade somewhat.

"Thank… you." He said. She took a long, deep breath and watched his chest rise and fall a few times.

"Asshole." She said, a small smile of relief creeping onto her face.


End file.
